The present invention relates to absorbent dressings.
It has been shown that it is advantageous to maintain a moist environment at the surface of a wound, with the advantages including faster healing, less pain, and rapid material debridement of the wound.
It is not advantageous to have fluid from the wound come in contact with the skin surrounding the wound. Disadvantages of such a result are maceration, irritation and multipication of skin organisms and their migration into the wound bed.
A goal of a good dressing design, then, is to maintain a moist environment of the wound surface while removing excess fluid from contacting the skin surrounding the wound.
A manner in which to protect the skin around the wound is to provide an adhesive seal up to the wound margin. Many dressings that provide this seal, however, do not provide the ability to handle wound fluid well enough to keep the seal from being undermined by fluid produced in the wound. In addition, sweat produced by sweat glands in the skin will undermine typical pressure sensitive adhesive.
A material which has proven to have a capacity that is sufficient to absorb fluid in the amounts produced by a wound is a hydrogel. When this hydrogel is used to dress a wound, fluid is effectively kept from the skin surrounding the wound. However, when the hydrogel is in direct contact with the wound, it retards healing of the wound.